I spent last Friday at Frances King Park drawing trees and small tree portraits. When I arrived the forest was full of painters from the Al Fresco Group and the forest critters were acting quite differently than they usually do. I noticed the ravens first as they scolded the painters and hooted and chortled. The squirrels were absent and the flickers and woodpeckers too. The group left about noon and I went into the woods by myself to continue my tree portraits and found these wonderful stumps. The lichens just glowed in the deep woods.

The pileated woodpeckers had been turning the tree behind me into sawdust and scolded me as I drew, but after a few moments flew off to another location. The cedar stump was another experience entirely. I was nicely settled drawing this stump and the beautiful turquoise lichens (which reminded me of the dawn I had seen in August with the sky turquoise and the clouds orange- turn your head to the side and see if it doesn't work for you too) when a squirrel arrived chattering and scolding. Then the flickers arrived creating a racket in the trees above me. It reminded me of a time near Canmore Alberta when as squirrel threw cones at me to get me to leave. This squirrel did not do that, however, he/she was certainly determined to distract me. Calm assurances that I would leave soon did nothing to slow the scold. Then when I did leave and was walking out of the woods I disturbed the raven pair lunching on termites and was resoundingly scolded again. Seems they had had enough of human interference for the day. And in some ways I was flattered by the attention. Usually they just ignore me.